Upon returning to Venice, he is imprisoned for a few months. He is then appointed secretary to the Bishop of Martirano (Calabria, rural Italy). He does not like it because Calabria apparently doesn't have enough of a scene. Ater a few more legendary affairs (Donna Lucrezia notable among them) he enters the service of yet another clergyman, CardinalAcquaviva of Spain. He is "involved" in orchestrating an elopement (in this case, he was completely innocent) and the resulting scandal forces the Cardinal to dismiss him.

Here, there is a rather interesting episode. In 1745, Casanova meets a castrato, named Bellino. He refuses to believe that Bellino is a man. Sure enough, he's right. Casanova unmasks Bellino (now named Teresa Lanti; her real name was Angiola Calori) and they fall in love and do the planning-to-marry bit. Unfortunately, Casanova is too concerned with social status to allow this to happen (acting was not a presitigious profession, especially for a woman), and they part ways.

After a bout of illness and a group of friends who insist on curing him with magic, he meets his most precious love: Henrietta. The affair lasts eight months, July 1749 - February 1750. The dark Frenchwoman is forced to leave him in February, and Casanova becomes the classicallover who has lost, comparing love to a monster and engaging in various depressed things.

He goes to Paris, then returns to Venice. There, he meets Caterina Capretta, has an affair with her (naturally) and asks her father for her hand(that is more surprising). The father says HA! and puts Capretta away into a convent. There, she meets a nun who is having an affair with the Frenchambassador.

At this point, all four of them (Casanova, Capretta, M.M.(the nun), and the ambassador) all fuck each other until it comes time for the ambassador to return to France.

Sound juicy yet? Get this:

The Venetian secret police are on Casanova's trail, allagedly because of some "occult works." In actuality, they are afraid of him and his vast network of powerful contacts (acquired during his travels and occupations, and by his Freemasonry). On July 25, 1755 he is arrested and put into the "Leads," a group of cells directly under the roof of the Ducal Palace. Six months later, he manages to make a daring escape and flees Venice for Paris, where he is widely feted and becomes a celebrity. In Paris, he performs several secret missions for the government and meets the Marquise d'Urfe, whose secret ambition is to be reborn as a man. Impressing her with his knowledge of the occult, he hoodwinks her out of a millionfranks.

Here, he goes through a bad streak. From '59-'62, he is arrested and charged several times; at one point the Marquise intercedes for him. He keeps hoodwinking her; this comes to a culmination when he explais that he will use an associate to impregnate her, and she will die and be reborn in her son. Ther Marquise believes him until...she discovers she's not pregnant. With that cash cow dead, he travels around Europe. In London, a prostitute rips him off for a large sum of money (the humiliation!), and from here he dates his decline.

Throughout the 1770s, Casanova works on his writing. Much of his body of work dates from this period. He continues to travel everywhere in Europe, and at one point almost sails to Madagascar. Affairs everywhere, of course. In 1788 he accepts the offer of a librarian position in the castle Dux, in Czech territory. There he is tormented by the locals, and is tremendously unhappy and depressed. From 1790-1798, he writes his most famous work: The History of My Life(Histoire de ma vie), now considered a manual of seduction unparallelled in Westernliterature. He dies April 4, 1798 of a urinary tract infection.